They entered the tunnel that rose through the fourth level and immediately aimed for the first disarmed traps. Yue watched with wide eyes as the first trap suddenly clicked as Avan just walked by.

Snickering, he turned his head back at her and winked. "If you are a good girl, I will tell you someday!"

Yue just looked at him with a blank stare, took a few steps forward, and punched him at his shoulder. And shook her hand with a grimace. "Ouch, what exactly are you made of?! That hurt!" She accusatory asked him before giggled. "You brute. Seriously. What level are you now at? One hundred? It feels like a brick wall, damnit."

With an amused glance at her, while reattaching some spears back into a spear trap, he answered her. "Nah, hundred would be awesome, but it's only at fifty-three now. And by the way, I never asked you! What level are you, miss adventurer?" She just took a step back and looked at him with shock and awe, opened her mouth and closed it again a few times. "You are telling me you are at BRONZE TIER already?! The last time we saw each other, I identified you as lower than my level! And I am level 19 after we killed the goblins! H-how...? And you had no class before, and now you are a healer, too!" Yue stammered, still quite shocked about his casual revelation.

Avan just remembered his identify skill. I'm so stupid! Argh, I always forget to identify people or monsters. Baka...

"Haha, okay, I'm just kidding." He told her. She just stared at him, with a big question mark visibly on her face. "I was joking about not telling you how I rearmed the traps. I'm using some kind of aura that enables me to do things inside my sphere of influence. Everything I usually could do with my hands, too. So, I just need to walk by and fiddle with those traps through the wall without physically touching them. It's like I am doing it myself, but just by sensing them, I can do it with my mind instead." He explained with a smug expression.

With a half-raised arm ready to punch him again, Yue reconsidered and lowered it again with a sigh. Not ready to hit that iron-like shoulder again. "You are shitting with me, right? You are not even denying your level and just harmlessly telling me you can sense and manipulate things inside your aura? Like, seeing me naked right now, you asshole?" She accused him with a shit-eating grin. "You know that people would kill for that kind of ability, right? And I hope you didn't do what I just suggested! I will kill you, Avan, I swear!" Yue hopped back a few steps to hopefully be out of his aura range. They glanced at each other and snickered about their harmless banter.

Merely half an hour later they found themselves in front of the staircase to the upper floors. Avan plopped down on the ground with crossed legs and summoned another hot, steaming mug of tea. Intentionally staring at her laughing eyes, he took a huge sip and slurped extra loud before swallowing. "Seen something interesting, foxy?" He asked her provocatively with a knowing look at her wide, speechless mouth. Without further torturing her, he suddenly held a second mug in his other outstretched hand. He offered it to her with a sideways glance. Yue, still shocked about all these recent revelations sat down alongside him, took the cup with a slightly tilted head and a questioning stare.

"I don't even want to question you anymore. First, your aura, then your leveling speed, and now you have a storage device and use it like it's the most common thing in the world. Avan, even most higher-leveled adventurers will kill you for the item if you continue to casually use it like that. No, I don't want to know where you found it, and I don't want to know where you wear it..." Lucker. She mumbled at the end.

Surprised at her reaction at first, Avan shrugged and returned to slurp his tea with pleasure.

After some time and some more fruits he had summoned, Avan told her about his plan. They would wait at the end of the tunnel, so her pursuers had to go through all these traps before they would be ambushed around the corner, right before the stairs leading down into the meadows layer. Yue just nodded, wiped her hands off on her pants, and followed him closely. They moved back through the tunnel while Avan effortlessly deactivated all the traps they walked by, just to rearm them immediately behind them again.

After arriving around the corner, Avan casually summoned some blankets to throw them on the ground just to lay down on top, with his hands crossed behind his head. He anticipated her question with a glance and just shrugged and chuckled lightly. "It's not like we won't hear them as soon as they disarm or involuntarily trigger any of these traps, you know? Or do you know of a person in or around Cyntha that can walk or teleport through without activating them?"

Yue watched him with a thoughtful expression, then shook her head slightly. "I... don't think so... no. And furthermore, Cyntha doesn't have many bronze tiers either. Maybe a dozen? On the basis you were not lying, you shouldn't have any problems in or around Cyntha. And even more so with some lackeys searching for me..." With a thankful glance at Avan, she joined him on the ground and was soon deeply asleep.

He placed a hand under his chin and watched her sleeping face with a thoughtful facial expression.

If I think about everything that happened to her since I meet her, I pity her... First, she lost her parents some while ago and grew up alone and then lost her seemingly only friends a few years later just too had to tell their parents of their death. I can't imagine what she had gone through. And here I am, thinking it all a dream came true while even here on Aorus, people suffer the same fates as on some continents and countries on earth. Break, or become stronger for each challenge you face. Stupid saying. When I think about it now, it kind of resembles a game mechanic. Keep up the challenges, beat your enemies and bosses, become stronger, beat even stronger enemies, and so on. If you fail, you stand up again and try again. Well, okay. In a real-life scenario, people would stay dead if they would die... But otherwise, it is shockingly similar. Like the saying I remember. Something like get rich or die trying? Ahhh, I am drifting away again. Always the philosopher, even in a new world. He chuckled.

He meditated and summoned his two orbs in quick succession. Let's play a little while we wait. Yue really needs the sleep, it seems, but I slept enough last... night... Or whatever time it was. Hard to track that underground. Pah.

He dimmed the light of both spheres as far as he could go until two ghostly dark orbs hovered in front of him that reminded him of an actual night sky without all the celestial spotlight-like shine they usually radiated. Not that he needed light with all this blueish magical lighting inside the tower of Akkalon around them. The spheres were very dark. A darkness that matched a dark night to its fullest. But still with tiny little specks of starlight inside, as if looking at the night sky or into another dimension. Beautiful. It just has the look of unlimited potential. Oh, right, I have a passive for that, too. He snickered. Ah, and I shouldn't forget to make use of all my saved-up stat points!

Avan Leaf

Level: 53

Free Stat Points: 190

Element: Celestial

Class: Healing Dungeonheart [Human]

Subclass: [Bronze] Healer of Akkalon

Stats

Strength: 75

Dexterity: 80

Vitality: 75

Intelligence: 60

Wisdom: 55

Spirit: 55

Active Skills [3/8]

[Bronze] Akkalons Touch

[Bronze] Akkalons Sphere

[Bronze] Celestial Storage

Passive Skills

Pain Resistance: [Bronze] 3

Steady: 8

Potential: [Unlocked]

Celestial Affinity: [Bronze] 5

Identify: [Bronze] 6

Celestial Sphere: 1

First Aid: 1

Tracking: [Bronze] 7

Meditation: [Bronze] 8

Pain Expert: 7

Primary Resources

Health: 425

Stamina: 425

Ambient Mana: 575

Celestial Storage

[Bronze Coin]: 76

[Silver Coin]: 23

[Gold Coin]: 1

10 [Golden Meaples]

1 [well-used Spear]

3 [Water Flask]

1 [short sword]

3 [blanket]

1 [Tent]

1 [short ax]

1 [Bow]

3 [wooden iron-tipped arrow]

79 stacks of [Berries]

11 dry [Roots]

36 [Herbs]

57 [Hound Hide]

114 [Hound Fangs]

13 [small Stones]

3 [Wooden Logs]

11 [Wooden sticks]

Ahahaha, I overdid myself again. One hundred and ninety free stat points to allocate. Let's think about that for a moment...

The 50 flat stat points were a massive boost in saving all my free stat points from leveling until now. My Akkalons Sphere and my Akkalons Touch are both magical and mana-based, so I should focus some more on the magical stuff... Thanks to my ambient mana through my dungeon class, I already have a tremendous mana regeneration. Hmm... This leaves me mainly with intelligence and spirit. Maybe some points in dexterity and vitality, too. Never a bad idea to have quicker reactions nor a higher life pool. So, fifty in intelligence and fifty in spirit. Another 50 in dexterity, and 20 each in wisdom and vitality? Yeah, feels about right.

Stats

Strength: 75

Dexterity: 130

Vitality: 95

Intelligence: 110

Wisdom: 75

Spirit: 105

Primary Resources

Health: 525

Stamina: 525

Ambient Mana: 825

Still unsure what luck does, but hey, it's never wrong to have more luck, right? And as always, Avan, impressive stats. Keep going, man! He chuckled and fist-bumped his own two fists at each other. Now some more playtime with my "balls"!

With hovering dark spheres above them, Avan leaned back and continued meditating while he waited. He was excited to finally test his strength against another person, especially now with his stats fully invested.

After some few hours of meditation and playing with his spheres, Avan listened to some low rumbling and vulgar cursing someone distantly yelled out loudly. It's showtime, I suppose. It will be intriguing to lurk for some time to see how good these people are. And how vital the capture of Yue is for whoever the fuck the mastermind is.

He mused while crouching out of the corner to take a better look at the poor guys tripping all the traps. He turned his head around the bend to glance at five guys in the distance whom one of them appears to jump on one foot while a spear was pierced through his other leg. Avan grinned to himself while a hooded figure was trying to pull the spear out but obviously worsening the wound with all the movement happening from the speared persons dancing around. Curses and swears were exchanged until the big woman at the rear shouted something indistinct. They immediately ceased their dispute. She strolled to the wounded and, without further warning, pulled the spear in one quick motion out. The scream that followed could be heard clearly through the whole tunnel, and maybe even on the other floors above and below. The apparent leader of their group growled something at the noisy dude whereon he was instantly silenced. Yeah, that was loud enough to wake up people from the dead, dude. Avan smirked as the woman held a short speech and gestured with her right hand around and pointed down into the tunnel, likely to tell them to be more cautiously now. After she got a nod from three of them, she stared expectantly at the wounded guy while tapping with one foot on the ground until he gave her a nod, too. Pointing at the activated spear trap, she hit one of the other guys at the back of his head and pointed down the tunnel. The guy scratched the spot he was just hit at and moved slowly forward. After watching him disarming the next trap, Avan assumed that he was some kind of rogue or at least a trap specialist of some sort. After another successfully disabled surprise, he pointed at one of the traps, which Avan had destroyed on his first walkthrough and forgot to hide, and called his fellows behind. Most likely to warn his companions of someone who had quite recently walked through the tunnel before them if he considered the recently triggered trap.

He took another step forward and was immediately sawed in two halves. Obviously forgot to check the vicinity for another trap while distracted at the one Avan had forgotten. Failed to clean up one destroyed thing to just lure them unintentionally into another trap. Hahaha. Not that easy to capture Yue, hm? Avan smirked with a dangerous gleam in his eyes.

Another guy had tried to jump at the unlucky fellow but had been too late to pull him back in time. The leader, now visibly angry, pulled over her enormous two-handed blade she had carried on her back and stepped forward to cleave into the next trap she had made out inside the left wall. With a screeching sound vibrating through the tunnel, she clearly destroyed the mechanism. Her sword was large and double-edged but simply made without any engravings. Two iron guards were ending in circular orbs, and the handle was wrapped with some kind of leather.

Avan directly knew the danger this woman was radiating to be the real deal. He couldn't fathom if she were more powerful. Still, he sensed she had a lot of combat experience when she moved and wielded her sword like an extension of her arms, not like the other guys in her team. The other three had pulled the remains of their deceased group member back to the fourth-floor entrance. They now slowly walked with some distance behind their leader, almost at the middle of the passage. One of the surviving lads had an arrow knocked on his bow, ready to shoot anytime. He was obviously some hunter or ranger, the way he looked with his green and brown-tinged leather armor and greenish hood. Probably to better disguise himself in forests between brown tree trunks and green underbrush. The other two remaining people were mages if the staff and robes were any indicators hinting at their profession. The distance was now close enough to understand their rumbling at each other.

"I swear, Seff, this quest is at least in the bronze tier! What quest below bronze or even silver would lead us into a freaking new dungeon? No one of the others at the guild mentioned anything about a dungeon here so close to Cyntha. Not even a whisper! Something is unquestionably wrong with this hunt, I tell you." The mage with the brown robe enthusiastically told his fellow mage friend with one of his arms flailing around.

The other guy, Seff, just glanced back with a deadpan look. "You always swear on a lot of things, Milan. This is not the first time, and it won't be the last time. You are easily scared, and I can't wrap my head around how you managed to get your mage class in the first place with such an attitude..."

With a hurt look and a huff, Milan talked back. "Just because you had such an easy life acquiring your healing class doesn't mean you can look down on others! You had it easy. Sitting back in town, learning medicine from books until you had your class and leveled it up by healing people. You can even heal yourself while others like myself have to endure pain and fight monsters to grow stronger! You are the last person who should talk like this." He stated offended. "And be honest, at least once in your life. We accepted this ominous quest to get someone's niece back who seemingly ran away from home just to end up in a dungeon? And after Eve, our brute of a leader there, tried to force herself into a door we found at the entrance, a fucking ethereal voice tells us to stop and sent a lightning strike into Eve, which you had to heal right after." He pointed at Eve, who deliberately ignored their banter. "Even Dunkin, our silent tree lover, was not convinced. We all had a bad feeling about the quest, and look what it had brought us. Jun is dead, and we are walking through a hallway of traps, with some of them already activated. If this Yue person had gone through here, she would be either dead or too fucking strong to survive this while only tripping some of those. Or... There is something or someone else down here we shouldn't fuck with..."

Both went silent. The ranger, Dunkin, turned his head surprised around to stare at his now silent companions.

Avan stepped away from his lookout and stroked his chin with his right hand with a thoughtful expression, with screeching noises of carved-out traps behind him. Huh. Interesting.

He moved to the still sleeping Yue and crouched down on her side, with the crooks of his arms on his knees and hands folded under his chin.

"Yue, they are here." As soon as he started talking, quietly, she stirred and looked at him with sleepy, opened eyes. Realizing what he just said, she promptly sat up, rubbed her eyes momentary, and stroked through her fiery orange hair. Yue tilted her head to the side as if she had just yet heard the shrill noises coming from the adventurer party, who constantly milled through the mechanism. With weary, questioning eyes, she looked at Avan.

He just smiled and stood up. After stretching both arms behind his back and tilting his upper body left and right with a loud pop, he was satisfied. He sauntered onward as if walking towards a picnic on a sunny day.

Yue stared quite shocked at his antics but giggled suddenly at the half-naked bearded man wearing just his underwear walking towards a presumable fight. She held a hand in front of her lips to stifle the laugher.

Avan had sensed all of it through his Celestial Sphere and grinned while walking around the bend with hands held up. The other group was around twenty meters away from their position. Upon seeing this stranger leisurely walking towards them, they immediately ceased every whisper. Both mages readied spells while the ranger pointed his knocked arrow at him. The leader just dropped her sword with the tip on her side downwards, yet ready to strike any second. Looking at each other for some seconds, Avan dropped the hands he had held up to signal them his peaceful approach and smirked like a madman.

"I couldn't stop overhearing your talk, Milan and Seff. And, of course, the noisy sounds of poor traps being butchered left and right, Eve. Or your quest to capture my companion here, who I only recently freed out of a cage where goblins had to hold her captive. And now I must hear that some adventurers stoop so low to abduct her again after she was chased for days through Cyntha by some shady individuals." He called menacingly while gesturing towards Yue to let her know she could step forward.

Traps are useless now anyway, but there still are some left between us. So better use them now to prevent them from rushing at us before I could ask some questions.

"This is Yue, who you were hunting. Yes, hunting. Not searching or bringing back. Because she is no niece of someone." Avan looked reassuringly at Yue with a short glance and turned his head back to them. "And I don't know you, but where I am from, people don't tend to hunt young women through the wilderness and into random dungeons. And while I am only partly sad about your dead party member." He pointed at the entrance. "I WILL kill all of you if you won't stop."

The threat was mainly directed at the woman. Because he had a hunch, the others were not as hard to deal with as with her. With a searching look into his eyes and a glance at Yue, the woman abruptly swung her sword upwards, To sheath it at her back, and grinned back at him. "Alright, I think I will trust your words for now. Also, I have a feeling my mates here would likely be killed otherwise because I am not sure about how the outcome of a fight between the two of us would end." After her confession, her companions had mixed feelings shown on their faces but loosened their spells and lowered their weapons regardless after a hand sign from their leader over her shoulder.

"And after you already seem to know our names, how about you tell us yours, too? I have heard it would be good manners." She looked at him with her eyebrows raised.

Avan burst out with a short laugh. "Of course, because good manners are something you would hold in high regards, huh? Oh never mind, names Avan. And this is Yue, as I mentioned before." He bowed mockingly, then pointed at Yue with his left open hand.

The addressed fox girl swallowed nervously once and nodded with a short greeting. "Hi."

"Good, now that we have all the pleasantries behind us, how do you want to continue?" Avan asked them honestly and looked at them seriously, and imitated the raised eyebrows flawlessly. All playfulness had vanished from his face.

Before the woman, Eve, could answer, the air mage stepped forward and spoke. "To be fair and to repeat myself. I was against that quest from the very beginning, and we already lost Jun because of this horse-shit, Eve! I want to report all of this back to the guild so they can figure out who had commissioned such a quest. They would undoubtedly investigate and dig out some things if what you say is true."

Eve threw a sideways glance at her teammate and complemented. "After Yue confirmed all of this, we would like to escort you back to the guild to record your statements, of course." She looked straight at Yue to anticipate an answer.

"Ehm... Yes... Avan tells the truth. He rescued me a few weeks ago from a cage where some goblins had held me captive, and right after, we cleared out the other goblins... who had already slaughtered my childhood friends..." Yue told them and stifled a sob at the end while staring at the ground with her hands clamped together until they appeared to be white.

With a sad smile on her face and pitying eyes, their leader looked back at Avan, who could literally see the gears spinning in her head while she processed all the information.

With a slight dip and steel in her eyes, she glanced between Avan and Yue and nodded at them. "Okay. I think the guild will be more than pissed at whoever had commissioned the quest. They record everything, and even if it was ordered anonymously, they most likely would be able to trace the advanced payment back to the quest giver."

Avan nodded back and looked for confirmation at Yue. "If you mean with guild the adventurers guild, then I agree to follow you back to Cyntha." He said to Eve and looked at Yue for an answer, with his left hand reassuringly squeezing lightly at her shoulder.

A few seconds later, the young woman glanced back up at him, and he could see her burning eyes, thirsting for revenge, and determination in her voice. "Yes, If we can manage to reach the adventurers guild without being stopped this time, I can finally report all of it. And I have a feeling, call it my woman instincts, that the goblin infestation and me being hunted afterward are related somehow."

Hearing her determination, Eve clasped her hand enthusiastically and loudly together and grinned, switching between Yue and Avan and her companions. "And AFTER this is solved, I want to fight with you, Avan! Because I have a feeling all these corpses on the floors above were your work!" She laughed loudly and pointed at him with her right hand.

Avan shrugged and scratched the back of his head with his right hand. "Ehm, okay? Yeah, sure. I need to fight another person. Fighting monsters only cant be good for my overall progress, you know? I am either not sure who would win. You are hard to read, but I know you have some combat experience against real foes and people, which I lack entirely. So yes, I would appreciate some sparring with you." He bowed to her with a smile and mumbled a "Teach me, senpai!", which gave him a puzzled look from Yue, who heard him. The others were too far away to understand some random mumbling. He just winked at her. "It's something from my... homeland. Maybe I will tell you someday."

Avan commanded his floating spheres forward, which had remained behind the corner over the entire conversation, and earned some spooked stares from Milan, Seff, and Dunkin. While Eve mainly looked at him with a gaze that told him she was even more interested in a fight than before.

With a silent thought and a poker face, he commanded Horny to stay at the meadow below for the time he would need to stay in Cyntha. He received a quick mental approval back.

It would be strange to bring him with me into town. And I don't even know if this would be possible or raise more questions about my classes and skills. Maybe there is a beast teamer class, maybe not? Better be safe than sorry for now.

He gestured at Yue, and they walked towards the other group, with two floating orbs following behind.